In case you missed any of those holidays while working on the whirlwind broadband initiative last December, we wanted to send heartfelt greetings. And that's no joke … you may have missed something in all that excitement. From Thanksgiving to December 27, when the project was completed, hardly a network department or studio was untouched by the frantic (but controlled) push to launch local broadband programming in 18 Cox markets.

While this is "old news" to some of you, the final turnover to SimplyLocal and the two additional city sites will occur in the last few Cox Communications (CCI) areas later this year, and the public announcement hit the streets – giving CIMedia welcome publicity in BroadbandWeek.com, MultiChannel News and other industry pubs. Now it's time to tell … (as Paul Harvey would say) … "the rest of the story:"

Stu Turner, network content manager – broadband, had been at his new job for just over a month when the news hit: instead of a gradual rollout of broadband content over a three month period, 20 sites would have to be finished in five weeks. Time to hit the panic button? Not really, because the CIMedia team — all across the country — pulled together in a massive undertaking that met the deadline, and did it with a top quality product.

It all started, of course, when Excite@Home announced plans to fold, and the CCI cable systems needed to arrange new "start pages" and Internet access for their high speed customers. Director of content and site operations, Ed Murray, had already done considerable work on the pending project, but the timetable speeded up in November. The Dec. 27 deadline loomed quite large, considering there were eight markets served by CIMedia sites and ten additional CCI markets to be converted.

"So many people in so many departments and studios pulled together to make it happen," says Stu. "Many studios in an existing cable markets had to build not only their own broadband start page, but also built SimplyLocal sites in other markets, too. A large body of the shared network content had to be totally rebuilt in one and a half weeks." Stu credits network producer Chris Hansen, the studio managers, producers with outstanding work on the project. He even nominated Christian McCarty for a GEM award for his work on this project; he worked every weekend in December.

At the network, the business development team had to renegotiate more than a dozen different content licenses for all new markets. "It was a mad rush, but they managed to do every single one and without increasing costs," says Stu. On the technical side, the engineering department folks had to set up all new servers, and the field techs had to install all of the search tools for all of the databases.

"Nancy Nethery and her team really drove the process of getting the sites ready to be built," says Stu, and network designer, Giuseppe Lombardo re–designed a whole new set of sites and the broadband start pages. Content Engineering Manager Christian McCarty spent untold hours translating Giuseppe's designs into workable HTML pages, and was responsible for much of the "behind the scenes" work that went into making the SimplyLocal sites fully functional. On Dec. 27, all was ready and a collective sigh of relief could be heard across the land as the SimplyLocal brand was launched.

After a short break for "Happy New Year," it was time to start gearing up again for the next round, coming up, with the scheduled launch of SimplyLocal in former Road Runner CCI markets and other areas, including North Carolina, Kansas (4 sites), and Fredericksburg, Va. and broadband pages for city sites in Oklahoma City, Northern Virginia. Discussion of other CCI markets is continuing and future rollouts will depend on CCI's conversion plans for "Cox Express" markets, careful evaluations, as well as experience with the latest rollouts, says Stu.

Whatever happens next, everyone who was part of the incredible team that pulled off the December launch should be proud of the parts they played. It was one of those experiences that makes for good company folklore — and you'll no doubt be hearing people say in the future, "You had to be there!"